The Karpaia
by Choonz
Summary: A taster to whet your appetite for my forthcoming novel 'House of the Red Flame', concerning the fall of Troy (details to follow). A Karpaia was a archaic trial of battle, a mock fight between a farmer, son of toil and a robber, who comes to despoil.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1: The Lesson**

 _"I am going to meet Akhílāu̯os, though his hands are as fire, and his heart like steel!" -_ Héktōr, Tamer of Horses

The warrior moved in perfect balance, with a grace that belied his ursine frame. His sword probed intelligently at my defences, eyes hard, hungry and confident, with the utter conviction of a born victor.

I ceded ground before the onslaught, doing just enough to balk my adversary's blade without risking my _kopís_ ' fragile bronze in the parry against the full force of my opponent's heavy blows. It was barely perceptible to those outside the warrior's circle, but there was a measure of fatigue in my foe, now, chest heaving as he gulped down Aíther's good air.

 _You need to feed the fire, but when you need to use the bellows, you have lost control of the blaze, and will yourself be consumed._ Tutor's words, taken well to heart.

 _Time to test him,_ I determined, risking a parry to measure my man. There was an almost-imperceptible shiver in the contact, the enemy's hand trembling slightly due to fatigue. Raking out a strike of my own in reply, flowing into the aggressive forms of my own attack, I felt the quickening of my own heartbeat, the blood-song in my veins, in response to the increase in my own effort. My interrogating _kopís_ was turned aside time and again, but now my opponent appeared to have no energy left for anything except dogged defence.

My _daímōn_ rose to see him flagging, and I redoubled my efforts. My bronze was blocked later and later, a cut to his groin deflected by a leaden parry at the last possible instant. The warrior's sword-arm dragged lower and lower and all the grace had left his stance, fatigue making him flatfooted, but the man was still dangerous, and he glared at me, defiance in his eyes. With a raw-voiced shout, he threw himself forward in a defiant charge, refusing to admit defeat, sword singing out.

Dismissively, I rapped the questing _kopís_ aside and with a burst of acceleration, whipped my own blade forward to take my opponent in the abdomen. _Mortal wound!_

* * *

I arrested the strike at the last possible instant, the blunted bronze of the practice blade lightly touching Héktōr's prodigiously muscled torso. With a cry of fury, the seventeen-year old Tamer of Horses spun upon heel, casting his sword away to skid and spark across the stone flags of the practice ground, for an instant not the dangerous warrior he was becoming but only a beaten, petulant child.

You may be sure that I heard the applause of the spectators – _all for me!_ – and drank it in like the ambrosia of the Gods! Nay, say rather that dark Khían wine that emboldens a man past sense.

I caught the eye of a pretty courtesan, arousal in her eyes, excited by the intensity of what she had witnessed, the proximity of Death's shadow passing over. Careless, I dropped my own blade, and crowed laughter to see Héktōr's discomfiture.

Feeling the pressure of hand upon shoulder, I turned around, ready to graciously accept the felicitations due my victory.

I was looking into the faded blue of my tutor's eyes and they were wroth. The old man's bony fist lashed out in a vicious right hook which caught me unprepared, a blow that landed flush on the temple, spinning me from my feet.

Dazed, I looked up at the world from the flat of my back, as the grizzled Spártān warrior rounded on Héktōr. "Absolutely pathetic! So tell me this, Héktōr, prince of Troy: The Gods gift you strength, and talent with a blade. So why do you cock leg and piss upon them?

You lost that bout for the worst of reasons. Because you lack the requisite physical fitness for extended contest! You are a far more talented fighter than Aineías. Older, stronger. But still you failed, for all he needs to do is defend and wait for you to tire. Then when tongue is lolling from your mouth like a rabid dog, and you are no more able to defend yourself than a babe in arms, he can pick you off at his leisure!"

Héktōr was rendered speechless, and for good reason. Not least because this was the longest speech either of us had heard pass the lips of the Lakonian. He spent his breath like a miser spends good coin!

Turning his ire back upon my good self, as I sat up, rubbing my head where he had cuffed me like a cur. "And as for you, O Ólympian victor, you, you are even worse! Mind full of gods, heroes and rutting wenches, it makes me sick to see you play to the gallery as you despatch exhausted opponent!

Let me tell you a thing: When it matters, there will be no audience of damp-thighed maidens, no pantheon of Gods upon high marvelling at your every move! No – there will be naught save the screams of the wounded, and your nostrils will not be full of the aroma of wine and ambrosia, but of offal and the dung of dying men!"

Reaching down, he grabbed me by the front of my tunic and hauled me to my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I observed the young _hetaíra_ who had been favouring me with the charms of her limpid eye now tittering at the indignity I was forced to endure.

I began to grow angry, the colour fading from my cheeks. I felt his point already well made, a boy's pride already well-micturated, but no! Let the heavens be wrenched open, Zeús' phallus descend, and fill gaping mouth with stream!

"I have failed you, boy, because where I have _taught_ you the sword, I should have _instructed_ you." Agēsílaos of Spártā averred, voice soft and cold as first flakes of winter's snow.

Slowly, reverently, the old man drew his own _kopís_ from his left hip. It was functional, a bronze so old and hammered to sharpness so often that the edge was discoloured into a rhapsody of sepia, so work-hardened that the blade's grain was visible, that patina so dulled no amount of polishing could make it gleam.

"This is my blade, boy, and my father's before mine. I have carried it all the days of my long life, and into my exile here. And like me, it is nigh the end of purpose. This bronze is brittle, from taking an edge too many times. A blade's life is of two generations, _país_. If hallowed Aganíppe, She Who Walks Behind the Rows, had seen fit to bless me with a son, he would have to take ingots of tin and talents of silver – the wealth from a town's sacking, or a dowry – to a smith and have a new blade cast.

Boasting is folly and shame, but let me for once in life be a fool for your edification! If we are talking the currency of a man's life, I was first sword in Spártā, a life-time ago. The _polémarkhos_ of a king's _taxeis!_ My name was spoken of in whispers of awe around the free kingdoms of Akhaia wherever warriors gathered. Then – because my cock knows not reason! – I did sard a woman whom I ought not. A woman of high degree. The sister of my lord king.

Now I am exile in a land not my own, and I teach princelings like you and Héktōr to play games with swords. I am cut adrift of almost everything that makes a man a man. But I _am_ a man, and I _will_ do my duty by you, to raise you as men!

When a sword is forged, it is the final firing that determines its worth. The blade a man carries cleaves closer to him than children or wife – or even the comrade who stands in the shield-wall at your right hand. The man whose shield covers you. If the blade fails, the man will fall. The test of a man and the test of a sword are the same. It is of utility, that they can be relied upon."

"Fame and glory? Piss and shit! Hubris! There are no blades of heroes. A sword is just a sword. And if there are gods, they have troubles enough of their own – why should they concern themselves with ours? It is enough to be of worth. To be that man who can be depended upon – by his _gwasileús_ , by his brothers in arms. To bear the shield to succour those that cannot. That is what a man should aspire to – and nothing more."

The old man looked down at the sword again, and there was a long pause. "I thought that I might outlive this blade. We shall see. Pick up your sword."

Automatically, I bent down to grasp the hilt of my practice sabre, where it lay. The Spártān stamped upon the blade, snapping it close to the tang. I looked up him, uncomprehending, this hardy old man who always treated the tools of war with the care a master craftsman has for his livelihood.

"Not that one. Your father's blade. For I invoke the _karpaía_."

"No!" Héktōr exclaimed, dumbstruck. "Gods, Agēsílaos, have you lost your mind? I forbid it!"

There was a horrified hubbub from the onlookers now that blood was to be shed in truth, but none dared the grim face of the seasoned Spártān.

"You can forbid me naught, boy! I have come to the end of long life. I would know I have not laboured in vain."

"Then fight me, old man. Not Aineías. He's not ready for this!"

There was a surprising gentleness in Agēsílaos' eyes. A flinty compassion in his voice.

"That is the price of failure, Héktōr! You forfeited the right to choose when you lost your contest with Aineías. That, if nothing else, should impel you to better yourself. Your strength is not for your own exaltation, but to be able to choose life for others."

Héktōr's face was white as chalk, framed in rapt horror. "And if Aineías dies?"

"He should not. He is well-trained, and I am old." Agēsílaos shrugged.

"Then know this, Agēsílaos. If you kill him, there stands no power in Ólympos or Tártaros below that will prevent me cutting you into pieces!"

Agēsílaos nodded, seemingly pleased. " _Agápē_. Perhaps there is hope for you yet, boy!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: Man of Bronze**

" _Yes, my friend, you die too. Why make such a song of it? Even Pátroklos died, who was a better man than you by far." -_ Akhíleús, Breaker of Men, to Lukaōn, prince of Troy

An unkindness of ravens flock behind my back, as though I am man-slaughtering Arēs himself. Their glossy plumage, a chatoyant black so profound it defines light by absence, a fine, fringed _pétthalos_ cloak, beloved by the War God and the Murmidónes, who slaughter. The dark birds scatter, wheeling – raw-voiced rooks, a murder of crows squabbling, mobbing sky as the mighty beasts who draw my wain strain every sinew, bearing me onwards to glory...

Every whoreson, indolent God that ever plied lyre is laughing as I plough! Helpless with mirth, tears running down their cheeks as they smite their mighty thighs! The bloody-handed Gods, who disdain manual labour, as do the _áristoi_ , men exalted by birth and the brazen metal they bear in battle.

The Gods! – who plough and sow only to cuckold, reaping the rewards of others' labour! The Gods! – and lusty mortal men in their image, who covet and steal.

 _To plough_. A fine euphemism for fucking! I find it but bitter jest as my adolescent strength is found unequal to a man's task. If sowing your wild oats required such Heraklean labour, no woman born would ever kindle from a callow boy's rutting efforts!

The furrow behind me, a meandering worm's cast, barely breaking earth, as I haul down savagely upon the oaken stock, trying to find purchase. The bronze share, uncomfortably phallic, mocks my pretensions at manhood as it scrapes and judders, refusing to bite down upon that well-fired summer clay.

My calves ache. My shoulders. My arse! Naked to the waist, I have torn my fine tunic to rags to wrap my raw-scraped hands. Shutting the stable-door after the horse has bolted – my soft palms blistered, bloody. I dig into my bag of barley seed, and scatter from my numbed hand – glad of brief respite from the ceaseless bruising impact – and my left-hand ox, contrary, follows the hay on his horn, turning anticlockwise from proper path.

 _Broad-arsed bastard_ _!_ I curse in my mind, as I wrestle him back with the goads. I no longer have the wind to waste on words. My sweat-soaked _pilos,_ a rumpled farmer's cap of felt, keeps the searing worst of Aploun's burning brand from my brow, but my bare back is raw as bloody meat upon the butcher's block.

My neck aches with craning. It has been on a swivel since daybreak, for that pernicious sun is not my only adversary. My arms are piled beside my furrow – the cutting _kopís_ , a man-tall _dipylon_ shield – a coracle of tanned leather stretched over a wicker frame – and a _khlamús_ , a crimson warrior's cloak that I have yet to earn the right to wear.

The enemy will come. A man with a burning brand and a sword. I await him. But it does no good to make watch and ward, leaning idle upon my long spear, no! Work still needs to be done, and that thankless task waits upon no man. Seed sown. Crops gathered in. Sheep sheared. All the mundane toil that a Man of Bronze eschews as the lot of lesser men, the _dâmo_ and the slaves, _doúlos_ , who serve.

Not this day! Today, I remember the way of life I protect, that my avid bronze transcends. This is a Lakonian test of manhood. The _karpaía_ , time-honoured. A play of violence, old as child-devouring Krónos, where two men fight – a farmer, son of toil, and the robber, who comes to steal.

The man of violence does not work for his bread, staff of life. He snatches it from hand! He is a Man of Bronze – quick to acquaint others with point of spear or the edge of his sharp sword. A man without compunction – wont to rob, to take from a labourer all he has, even his very life, and carry off his wife into the bargain!

A bastard, beloved by Arēs of the Red Hands. A man of that rare, ruddy talent – his breast an empty carapace of bronze in which no human heart tolls.

My old bastard is out there. I can feel his eyes upon my back. So close to the fallow earth as I am, it will be a thing of no moment for him to steal up on me, like the balm of an evening breeze.

My tongue is sharper than my bronze, a honed _skiphos_ of two edges, excoriating him in three tongues. I have been out here since the crack of rosy-fingered Dawn, and I want – no, I _need_ – this to be over.

To know my measure.

The _karpaía_ is no game. It is a proving-ground for men. One of us is going to bleed, sanctifying sacred soil. Me or him. I am resolved upon it, though there are other ways the test can end.

Possibilities I refuse to contemplate. To yield, throwing myself craven upon another man's mercy – and find it wanting. To be hurled to the ground, wrists tied behind my back by a stout cord of leather. Stripped naked, and yoked to the plough, to the shame of my father.

The men of Spártā respect only strength. The fate of those who yield, _doryalotos_ , deplorable. Scorned by given word, forced to wear the dogskin cap, and the skins of wild animals. Spat and pissed upon. Beaten absent cause. Taken like a bitch in heat, should long-haired Lakonian master be so inclined!

Forced to drink neat wine, _ákratos_ , and dance – salutary lesson to Spártān youths, those rough young cubs, of the end of drunken license! There are many ways to shame a man, and the Lakonians know them all.

Despite this, hard as it is to comprehend, most men cede in the contest, the _ágōnos_ that defines, the crucible that refines that ruddy, martial metal. The soil saps his strength, and he stumbles in the strike, vigour leached from him by his sweat, and the long anticipation of deadly violence. He trembles, and grows pale to see the spigot of his life broached, like an old wine skin, blood welling as the bronze edge caresses flesh – that most horrible of intimacies! That man looks into Arēs' ghastly face, carved with bloodless wounds, and meets his own mortality as the _eudaímōnia_ flees from fatigued limbs.

He throws down his arms, yielded. One man or the other – farmer or robber, owning himself outmatched. Thus, the world turns, and in this wise are men made slaves, _doryktetoi_ – captives of the spear.

Not me! I would liefer bleed. Take a proper man's portion – in wounds, given or received, it matters not.

This is the _karpaía_ , the sword-dance of swarthy Lakonian men, of wild Makedones and Pétthalians. It is how the Murmidónes train and are proved – to be of sound wind, and to be obdurate. To never yield. To become that man who has to be cut down.

It is how the Tamer of Horses was trained, and he learned that lesson well enough.

* * *

I look up – and the pitiless enemy has stolen a march on me! Agēsílaos has bided his time through the sweltering heat of the day. Now, finally, he makes his move, late, slanting across the ground with the shadows of evening. He waited until I reached the end of my row – my wandering attention preoccupied by turning my team – and the sere wind that kicks up dust to scatter muffles the sound of his sudden onset, such as it is.

For a man so old, he is deathly quiet in his stealth. He drifts across the ploughed land like chaff across a mill floor. His shadow, angular, leading with point of sword, bears no redress. This is not a man for second thoughts. Not a man given to reflection, for all that his days have been long upon this shield of earth.

His narrow face a terse, two-edged _skiphos_. Hair, white as salt, chiming late light. He has braided it for battle, _kárē-komóōntes_ – the adornment of a poor man and a proud, bound up above his brow. Mine is shaved to the scalp, _en khroi keirontes_ , the mark of an _éphēbos_. My shame, gleaming naked for all to see. He has seen to that task himself, that hateful old man.

He is a living ideal. A sword and a man to wield it. No shield. No _hóplon_ of bronze. Strength sacrificed for speed. Or perhaps this is the measure of the contempt this Killer of Men holds me in, that he thinks he needs no protection from my bronze.

Perhaps, it is done from love, that I might have a chance at life. I do not know. I cannot understand the motivations of the man who trained me. I cannot compass what makes him as he is. A weapon. He is alien, _xennos_ – soft and seldom of speech but hardy and pitted as an olive tree.

I can only hope to survive him.

He angles towards my pitiful pile of weapons, and I curse. He is closer, though I am faster. I spring across the furrows to intercept, a nervous rabbit rousted from his drey amongst the tall marram grasses. I see no other option.

It is only after that I realise I could have fled before him. Young and fleet as I was, he would never have caught me.

As it is, I am barely in time to snatch up my sword – sacrificing a breath, a heartbeat of precious time to stoop and grasp hilt. It is an allotment of life that hangs in the balance as the Lakonian closes with me. I jerk upright, ungainly, as Agēsílaos makes his lunge – a jab off the front foot, intended to skewer my throat with the back-sharpened tip of his _kopís._

A killing blow. Any doubts that I am in a fight for my life are cast to the crows.

With the kinetic acuity of youth, I load my legs – a split-step, and spring nimbly aside. Or would have – the ploughed earth turns beneath heel, and I register the blow that will kill me.

At the last instant, I jerk my head aside – and feel the agony as his sword whispers into the space I barely vacated, nicking the tip from my ear.

Here. You see, _país_ _?_

I feel no fear. There is no space for it. My own blood liberates me from the named fear – that I would freeze and fall – else, far worse, flee or yield.

I bring blade to bear – an ungainly hack in my last defence. His _kopís_ meeting mine in those lateral, flowing strokes the Lakonians so love – a sinewy draw-cut, and we exchange three swift blows, an arm's span apart – all muscle memory. Blades flickering tongues of flame.

I watch his wintry eyes. Faded, pellucid blue. Not his sword. Here is truth.

I am swifter. My form is good. He has trained me well. I draw blood on my fourth stroke – binding his blade with a roll of the wrist, my blade plunging like a kingfisher's bill to score a furrow upon Agēsílaos' upper thigh. He does not even blink. But he is no autocthon. He bleeds. It heartens me.

I may yet live – and more. Sieze _kléos_ , as flower from briar, and snatch my seemly prize away with gashed hand. If I remember my lessons, and cleave to them.

I dance upon the canting land, riding the heaving billows of the turned earth under foot as I force the issue. My athleticism makes the sapping exertion appear effortless, a deft white tern skimming over the streams of Ocean – the burden borne by my heaving lungs and aching limbs.

I have no alternative but to prosecute this fight in this manner. My adversary is deadly, but dread Father Krónos is a far more implacable foe. Agēsílaos is an old man – and in his fatigue lies my sole hope of victory.

I do not halt, nor falter. I will the fickle plough-turned earth to uphold me.

It is a straggling, awkward contest, without music or metre. No _pyrrhikhe,_ this – the parsimonious old man begrudging me the measure of the dance.

There is this, too. In failure, death. Twice, I have the chance to thrust home. Opportunities I would have taken without hesitation in sparring. Chances I passed up, since my injured adversary would be able to strike me in his turn.

Still, I am prevailing, Agēsílaos having no answer to the indefatigable energy of youth. The old man's concentration monomaniac in its intensity, but with every attack, I feel ever closer to landing a decisive blow.

If I can. If it is in me to strip life from a man I respect. Maybe even love.

The end is near. Proscribed, like a sacrifice to Posiedaōn, Earth-Shaker. Agēsílaos stumbles into a lagging lunge, his lead leg skating on soil, and I, favouring the stroke that won the bout with Héktōr, flow aside like water, whipping my blade inwards at Agēsílaos' unprotected torso.

It is the chance that Agēsílaos has engineered, with pitiless, inhuman patience throughout the entire strength-sapping bout. The only chance he was ever likely to get. I am too swift and he, too old and slow. Deliberately, ignoring the terrible pain, he blocks my cut with his left forearm, feeling the blade rip through muscles, tendons and ligaments, embedding itself deep into the bone of his forearm, trapping the blade.

* * *

I meet Agēsílaos' gaze. The old man's sword arm rock-steady as he levels his _kopís_ at the hollow of my throat. Eyes that regard me with all the compassion a butcher holds for the carcase on his chopping-block.

Time is mine – a short-term loan from the left-handed gods. I spend it wondering how many others have died looking into the eyes of this terrible killer.

"Get it over with, then!" I grit, forcing a smile, determined to die on my own terms.

Agēsílaos' aloof gaze dissects the depths of my soul. Searching for fear. Weighing my spirit on the scales.

After an age, he steps backwards, relinquishing hallowed sword from agèd hand. The relic falls tip-first towards the parched ground. Shatters like an icicle.

The Lakonian favours me with that grudging nod which is his highest accolade: _You will do, boy._ My heart burns within me, even as it hammers in my breast, but I know well enough to keep my emotions to myself.

Ignoring the ruin of his sword and the ruin of his arm with equal dispassion, the old sweat speaks quietly and intimately, his eyes those of a younger man, clear and bright. "You have it in you to kill, and you know how to die like a man. The rest can be learned. But you know that which must not be forgotten."

With a straight back, evincing no sign of pain, the ruin of his shield-arm hanging limply by his side, Agēsílaos stalks away. His long _khlamús_ , pale rose attar, faded and frayed, catches upon the breath of the War-God. One last time.

That was the last time I ever saw my Swordmaster in life.

* * *

The next day, the Spártān went missing, without giving notice. A search-party found him sitting on a hillside, staring unblinkingly into the sunrise. The scout hailed him, somewhat unnerved, and, upon receiving no reply, reached to shake the old man by the shoulder.

And recoiled upon finding Agēsílaos cold and dead, those unfathomable eyes sere.

Man died with the sword that was his soul. I will renew acquaintance in Rhadámanthus' domain, the fabled green fields where we butchers of men go when we die. There, we wheel the wind-shod wain. Compelled to slay, over and over again. To charge a wing. Stand fast, and make the stone-stacked wall of shields. Twist and turn in the War-God's deadly dance, with sleek sword and the ash-hafted lance.

This is a Mykēnē heaven. The dream and reward for men like Aíās, son of Telamón. It is not my ideal. But since when do the fucking Gods care about my wants?

I will have what I have earned, at life's end – and no more. I am a Man of Bronze.


End file.
